Free Internet Access?

[Rod Clark]

> http://www.npr.org/news/national/970116.freenet.html
> 
> NPR needs to be informed of SCN and the like, it can be done with out "in
> your face" advertising.

   SCN can support 15 phone lines at 14.4k bps on a realistic
"free" budget in a city the size of Seattle. That's an
incredibly tiny fraction of the bandwidth that people need and
use here in the Seattle area. SCN can do even that much only by
offering a few limited text-only services that are frankly
inadequate and obsolete for most uses.

   Freenets occupy a valuable but limited niche on the Internet.
Cutting services to such a low level is an acceptable answer for
some users, but isn't realistic for most current Internet uses.

   There's a hardware equivalent to Freenets, too. Ask any
business with a storeroom full of dusty IBM XT's and AT's
whether they'd be willing to donate them to a nonprofit public
service organization. Those XT's and AT's occupy the same place
in the world that SCN does. 

   On the other hand, advertiser-supported services expect to
provide full services to millions of people. The budget needed
to do that is far outside the scope of Freenets - SCNA's recent
fundraising drive raised about one dollar fifty cents per user
for the year. On that kind of Freenet budget, where's Real Audio
on SCN? Where's streaming video? Can you try out CU-SeeMe
teleconferencing, or anything else that's expanding the ability
of people to communicate in newer and better ways over the Net?

   The advent of advertiser-supported services like the one in
the NPR story is news that potentially affects the kind of
Internet services that most people use and want. SCN hasn't come
up with any news like that lately, and it isn't likely to.

Rod Clark

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